


Severance

by rokudaime



Category: Naruto
Genre: ANBU - Freeform, Alternate Universe, Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-12
Updated: 2015-08-12
Packaged: 2018-04-14 06:42:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4554636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rokudaime/pseuds/rokudaime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a world where Kakashi never left ANBU, one of the faces on their new list has him breaking protocol, and two former students face an impossible choice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Severance

 

 

  
He can see it in their eyes as they look at each other.

_Is there no other way?_

ANBU's books are top secret. Kakashi knows this, and he knows the repercussions of letting secrets pass his lips. Last time it'd been disastrous. This time could be an amends.

_They'll do this with or without you. I thought you deserved to know._

Their faces as they stand at the window are grim as death. He's as good as crossed out. Against four ANBU, even with two of them unblooded, he doesn't stand a chance.

Plain black clothes, set of armor, a mask for each of them. Naruto's is fashioned after a fox. He finds it in poor taste. Sakura is given one shaped like a tiger and she stares at it until someone asks her to move.

He watches them carry their boxes, looking smaller than they are in their sadness. _They're just kids_ , he thinks, and his chest is tight enough but there have been younger. Like Itachi. And he doesn't like to think about Itachi, never liked to think about him, now for different reasons but still the same. He's the cause of all of this, really. The reason Sasuke went rogue. He threw whatever might have been of his life away, just for the possibility of revenge.

And now the rest of Team Seven have to seal off their hearts to tie up loose ends. It's painfully obvious how much Naruto loves him, even still, after he almost killed him. As much as Sakura ever did, maybe more. It's been bleeding out of him wherever he goes for two years. Kakashi only hopes he will find a way to patch himself up and carry on.

Somehow it's fitting, that the two who still bear love for him should be the ones to do it.

Sakura's still gazing at her mask and Kakashi looks at it, and at the pink of her hair, and Naruto's, bright as the sun. The masks will do them no good. Just like him, the White Fang's silver-headed son, they will have no chance at total anonymity.

At first glance Sasuke will know. And he hopes it breaks his heart as it should.

If he were someone else, someone softer, someone kinder, maybe Kakashi could stand with the two of them as they mourn their former teammate. But he isn't, and he won't, and Sasuke only has himself to blame.

It's too much. He's too far gone.

He used to look at Sasuke and see himself. His own childhood, alone and angry. Putting everything he had into becoming the best, the most skilled, the most deadly. He used to look at Sasuke and see a chance to foster something else in a heart so full of pain and darkness.

He knows better now.

He looks at Sasuke and sees failure. He looks at Sasuke and knows the deepest regret. He sees it all laid out before him, stretching far into the past and future. History repeating itself as it always will, he supposes, as long as there is war and children are unloved and it rots something inside them.

There's one mistake he can keep from repeating. He will not be Hiruzen.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I feel a little bad for how savage this turned out. Sorry Sasuke!


End file.
